Thermal
Integration's TI-A8736N heatsink is a heavy little cooler for the Intel
Pentium 4 processor. Weighing in at 680grams, this cooler uses a fair amount of
thin copper and aluminum plates to form a lean, mean, cooling machine. At least, that's
what we're looking for from the TI-A8736N.

This type
of bolted-together construction is not new in the cooling world, but Thermal
Integration have taken a couple different technologies and mashed them into one.
For starters, we find the same internal triangular base as that of the Tocools Novasonic-AlCu, and the remainder of the construction
is pretty reminiscent of the way Zalman's flower shaped heatsinks are put together.

Zalman have certainly cornered
the market with their style of bolted-together heatsinks, but I can also see
Thermal Integration becoming a driving force in the more economically sensitive
mainstream users segment. Bolted together, the 60 or so copper and aluminum fins come together to
form a cohesive heatsink shape. The copper fins are located directly over the
core of the processor to aide in thermal transmission, and mounted above all of
this is a 70mm fan.

Not only are there full size aluminum and copper fins in the construction of
this heatsink, but between heat fin is a 1mm thick copper spacer in
the shape of a smoothed out triangle. The copper base that these spacers form measures
8mm thick at the edges and about 13mm high at the center. The copper spacers help ensure heat is
transmitted laterally to all the fins, and the triangular shape helps with with
airflow within the heatsink itself.

Two relatively small screws and some steel brackets hold the fins of this heatsink
together. Were the screws to loosen, the heatsink would come undone and the processor
below would probably overheat and fail.